Israel on Obama’s policy.

An interesting take from Joel Rosenberg regarding how Israel views Obama’s foreign policy weakness. If they’re this torn up over Syria, what would they ever do with Iran?

Mr. Obama cannot even persuade former defense secretary Don Rumsfeld or former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton – two outspoken hawks, ready and willing to use military force against WMD in the Middle East when necessary – to support his limited plan for action in Syria. This just shows how deeply the president is mistrusted by those who would otherwise support bipartisan efforts to take out tyrants and their most dangerous weapons.

That means one thing: The Israelis are on their own, and now they know it.

“Until Saturday, Obama’s Middle East policies were generally regarded by the Arab world as confused and incoherent,” notes the Times of Israel. “As of Saturday, he will be perceived as one of the weakest presidents in American history. That scent of weakness has emphatically reached Iran. . . . Khamenei and his advisers recognize that the likelihood of this administration using military force against a country with Iran’s military capability are very low, if not nonexistent. And they’re not the only ones who realize this. The same conclusions are being drawn by Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet colleagues, who will doubtless have been watching the Rose Garden speech, will have internalized what they had long suspected: that Washington will not be the place from which good news will emanate about thwarting Iran’s nuclear drive.”

“The punch line is that the more that Israel perceives the U.S. as hesitant, the more Israel will be pushed to deal alone with the Iranians, something that the U.S. really did not want,” Michael Herzog, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the New York Times. “People ask, ‘If this is the case on a relatively simple thing like striking Syria, how will they act against Iran?’ It deepens the question marks.”

Ari Shavit, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, told the New York Times that U.S. actions were leaving Israelis feeling like “orphans” and wondering “if there is still a reliable parent in Washington who is really committed, who understands what’s going on and who is willing to act.”